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15 January, 2007
Three gold miners, jailed on 17 December, for illegal gold mining in the southern Zimbabwe region of Matabeleland, died six days after their arrest from exhaustion and starvation. The three died after days of filling trenches without being given food or enough water by the police forces of Robert Mugabe’s government.
In a country with 80% unemployment and an inflation rate that hit a new high of 1,281% in December, the three miners were arrested with 12 other gold diggers as part of the government’s crackdown on illegal mining, called Operation Makorokoza Zvakwana by the Mugabe police forces.
One police officer told ZimOnline, Zimbabwe’s independent news agency, that when the workers tried to resist the continuous trench filling, or complained of hunger, they were beaten “because that’s how our bosses had instructed us to treat them.”
The three died at separate times on 24 December after experiencing extreme dizziness before collapsing.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s labour leaders, who were severely beaten in September after police forces broke up an anti-poverty rally, have sued top Mugabe aides for unlawful arrests and injuries incurred to them. Zimbabwe Council of Trade Unions (ZCTU) Sec. Gen. Wellington Chibebe and 14 other labour leaders sued Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi, Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri, and several other police officers for Z$1.34 billion (US$9.13 million), which includes general damages, and unlawful arrest and deprivation of liberty.
ZCTU Secretary General Wellington Chibebe
In the lawsuit, attorneys for the labour leaders cite violations of the Zimbabwe constitution, Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 5 of the African Charter for Human and People’s Rights, Article 10 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel Treatments.
The labour leaders, on 12 and 13 September, were subjected to beatings that caused bone fractures, serious cranial/facial bruising, and head injuries. Some 256 ZCTU activists were arrested at the time.
The current economic crisis in Zimbabwe, which saw the inflation rate jump a full 182% from November to December 2006, has caused mass labour strikes in the health care and education sectors, not to mention in mining and energy industries, because salaries have become miniscule compared to the vast inflation jumps. For example, staff of the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority staged a two-day strike on 3-4 January, when an internal memo was released stating that salaries would only increase by 50%.